The World of Warcraft Website announces that the Mists of Pandaria expansion is now live in Blizzard's MMORPG, allowing players opportunities to get in touch with their inner kung fu pandas. There were launch events last night to led up to the launch, and the website has coverage of the North American launch party, which includes a nearly five-hour(!!) video of the festivities, and there are galleries with launch coverage on Gaming Illustrated and Hardware Heaven. Here's one last official preview covering professions in the expansion, and here's word on the release:

For millennia, the continent of Pandaria has remained hidden, veiled from the rest of Azeroth behind a wall of impenetrable mists. Now the fog is lifting just as warships of the Horde and the Alliance clash off the coast of the lost continent. As heroes from both factions venture onto Pandaria’s shores to explore its ancient forests and cloud-ringed mountaintops, they soon make contact with the mysterious denizens that dwell there… heralding the start of a new era of discovery and conflict for all of Azeroth.

World of Warcraft®: Mists of Pandaria™ is now live and available in a store near you! You can also click here to upgrade to the digital version directly through Blizzard. Featuring a new playable race (the pandaren), a new character class (the monk), and an exotic new continent to explore, the new expansion offers a huge variety of content for new and returning players.

Yakubs wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 13:20:Knock the Panda crap all you want, at least WoW fills its zones with quests. As opposed to Heart symbols spread randomly around the zone with menial tasks attached.

Quests? You call those quests?? WTF are you smoking???

Uh, sorry, bud, you can't go all revisionist on RPG definitions just because you don't like WoW. Yes, WoW, is chock-full of quests. You get a task, you travel to another location to complete the task, then you get a reward.

Also, if you choose to always kill the mobs in the area instead of the more creative choices...

Now you sound delusional. You think the non-combat options in the Heart quest are "more creative?" You do realize that these tasks consist of running around the Heart zone looking for static objects that are glittering at which point you run up to them and hit the F key?

After doing a few of these Heart nodes, many of which had no combat options at all, I was begging for some kind of combat. Good lord what a snore.

Note that I don't play WoW and have no intention of getting MoP. Just to defuse your "fanboy" ad hominem response before it happens.

InBlack wrote on Sep 26, 2012, 03:49:Everytime you start thinking about arguing which MMO has the better quest system (WoW or GW2 for e.g), just think back about the experiences you had playing Skyrim, Fallout2, Ultima 7.....

Agent.X7 wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 16:14:Opened my CE when my shipment came in today. Pretty. Installed the game onto my laptop. Just can't seem to press the subscribe button, though.

Back to Claptrap and GW2.

I broke down and subscribed. Hated every minute of combat. About to log out and play GW2 when my friend showed me pet battles. I have over 100 mini pets from when I played a lot. Now I can fight with them. Crap. I need more hours in a day.

It's annoying that the one feature I thought was the dumbest is pretty much the only thing I like so far. I keep trying to dodge in combat. No. Keep trying to hit F to interact with things. No. Blarg.

coolkev99 wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 17:21:Its popular to bash WoW these days, but its really not that bad. It just hasn't changed the formula much and now gone stale. Many of us have moved on. There are still those newer players and die-hards who still like it, but this game is slowly becoming irrelevant.

I have no idea if it will have any real staying power on me, but I had a friend convince me to pick up MoP and month worth of playing time and I am enjoying it so far. Best expansion since TBC if you ask me. I generally feel like I am exploring new places and fighting new monsters, not just slightly retouched old models and new areas that look more or less the same as the old. Additional in game cut scenes and voice acting also help (less - bah wall of text, whatever Ill just go to the spot on the map).

I am having a good time for now. I will see if that feeling stays at level cap though...

I don't bash it, it's just not really evolving at a rate that lets it keep up with newer games. Everyone is just tired of the WoW formula. And instead of evolving the game, they do stupid things like change the talents every few months and shorten the PVE portion of expansions.

coolkev99 wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 17:21:Its popular to bash WoW these days, but its really not that bad. It just hasn't changed the formula much and now gone stale. Many of us have moved on. There are still those newer players and die-hards who still like it, but this game is slowly becoming irrelevant.

If people are enjoying the game, more power to them, but after the short period till burnout in cata, I don't really see any point in going back only to quit a month or two in.

Its popular to bash WoW these days, but its really not that bad. It just hasn't changed the formula much and now gone stale. Many of us have moved on. There are still those newer players and die-hards who still like it, but this game is slowly becoming irrelevant.

Normally a new WoW expansion gives me that little bug until I pick it up. Pandaria oddly hasn't what so ever. I don't know if it's the new asian or kid focus, or that WoW hasn't been any fun since TBC. Then again with GW2, TL2, BL2 and others, who has the time?

I have a few friends who are picking this up and still play WoW. But not because it's fun, because they feel if they quit, they'll have wasted $6+ grand in subscription fees, character transfers, pets, plushies, expansions, etc for 5+ accounts between my buddy, his wife and eldest son.

The rest of my friends and I are playing GW2 mostly, and having entirely to much fun. That WoW playing friend refuses to try the game.

sauron wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 15:45:I was running around GW2 on a new character last night and found a small castle which was a heart/quest hub. Suddenly, the gates slammed shut and the walls were attacked by a group of centaurs. I and the other PCs in the area spontaneously banded together to defeat them and save the castle, which turned out to be one of the ways you could fill up the heart and complete the hub.

If that's questing, I'm all for it - I had a complete blast and it was totally unlike anything I had seen in any other MMO (and I've played a few). Dynamic, spontaneous, and most of all, fun!

Yeah... it's cool when a Dynamic event is triggered near by, that counts towards the Renown Heart progress. The Renown Hearts are actually intended to give you something to do while a an event may trigger, more than being the main focus of the PvE. But since they count towards zone completion... they're also important to do.

Yakubs wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 13:20:Knock the Panda crap all you want, at least WoW fills its zones with quests. As opposed to Heart symbols spread randomly around the zone with menial tasks attached.

Quests? You call those quests?? WTF are you smoking???

At least some of GW2's menial tasks are creative and interesting... and give you a choice of 2-3 different activities to complete them. However, I do admit a majority of them are the same things. Also, if you choose to always kill the mobs in the area instead of the more creative choices... well, that's your call. It's still far superior, IMO, to WoW's so-called "quests".

I was running around GW2 on a new character last night and found a small castle which was a heart/quest hub. Suddenly, the gates slammed shut and the walls were attacked by a group of centaurs. I and the other PCs in the area spontaneously banded together to defeat them and save the castle, which turned out to be one of the ways you could fill up the heart and complete the hub.

If that's questing, I'm all for it - I had a complete blast and it was totally unlike anything I had seen in any other MMO (and I've played a few). Dynamic, spontaneous, and most of all, fun!

Yakubs wrote on Sep 25, 2012, 13:20:Knock the Panda crap all you want, at least WoW fills its zones with quests. As opposed to Heart symbols spread randomly around the zone with menial tasks attached.

Quests? You call those quests?? WTF are you smoking???

At least some of GW2's menial tasks are creative and interesting... and give you a choice of 2-3 different activities to complete them. However, I do admit a majority of them are the same things. Also, if you choose to always kill the mobs in the area instead of the more creative choices... well, that's your call. It's still far superior, IMO, to WoW's so-called "quests".